My conversation with Freud

“Interesting,” I say, stroking my shitty mustache as Sigmund Freud leans back in his chair and crosses his legs. “You’re saying my attachment to the ukulele is my way of worshipping a phallus without giving in to the cultural aggrandizement of size?”

“I’m not saying anything except that part of you already thinks this.”

“But doctor how did you know that I have a small penis?”

“The contemporary symbol of the phallus is about more than just the male reproductive organ. And also I was making a statistical inference.”

I frown and stare at the carpet to avoid eye-contact, but not so much that it seems like I’m trying to avoid eye-contact, except then I become paranoid that he can tell I’m trying to pace my eye-contact so I end up compromising and looking at his mouth like a fucking creep. Hesitantly I start, “Suppose I reject this hypothesis? I mean it’s a little cliche, right? Freud likes talking about the phallus, we get it. So original. It’s too easy to compare things to phalluses. Anything that’s taller than it is wide is arguably phallic.”

“Clearly you haven’t seen my chubber,” he interrupts. “I think they call this a choad.”

“Pseudoscience is what we call a hypothesis that isn’t falsifiable. So if your analysis works backwards from the inviolable law that everything I do is because of dicks, and you can use this to explain all of my behavior, then there’s no way to falsify your guess. So I reject your hypothesis.” As I finish, I look expectantly at his mouth.

Freud smirks or does something fucky. I’ve never seen a photo of him and know almost nothing about him but in my mind he looks like a black-haired nerd wearing a monocle. Oh, okay, Freud cleans his monocle on his shirt. “Then I would say that your rejection demonstrates your rejection of the phallus. That you can try and set yourself apart from traditional masculinity by way of rejecting its symbols, but this actually betrays the truth that they still have power over you - if they didn’t then you wouldn’t feel the need to reject them.”

I look back down at the carpet thinking to myself that this actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe it’s time to give up the ukulele.